Families and businesses conduct meetings for various reasons and purposes. It may be a family gathering or a yearly review of the progress within a business. We physically held the meetings in a set location in the past. However, technology has brought about an extra dimension to conducting a meeting, online conference calls. Traditionally, online conference calls were just for large corporations. That is not the case today. From students and families to small businesses and individuals, pretty much everyone nowadays uses online conference calls. They are an affordable means for holding meetings, delivering instructions, and for teaching.
During the pandemic, the use of online conference calling rose to a great extent. Be it audio or video calls, conference calls enable communication between a few people to thousands of participants. In this post, we will look at the benefits of online conference calls. We will also look at some of the best online conference calling software.
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Why use online conference calls?
Businesses and people worldwide repeatedly try to perform as many tasks as possible in the least amount of time. With deadlines constantly looming and coming closer and closer, you come up with ways of maximizing your time use.
It saves your employer’s cash. Nowadays, companies have been trying new ways of increasing their efficiency using various means. One such way is reducing the travel costs to meetings and conferences and conducting them online. Online conference calls have proven to be the best alternative to physical meetings for the reasons below.
Benefits of Online conference calls
Saves on travel cost
As we have seen above, we hold Virtual conferences online. Therefore, the company or people do not incur the travel costs that they would otherwise incur if they were traveling to a physical location. The goal of any business is to maximize outputs while minimizing operational costs. All business travels must be accounted for. With Online conference calls, the company does not have to pay for the air ticket, accommodation, and food. These are some necessities that an employee would need when they have traveled for a conference. These funds can be put to other beneficial uses or employee motivation programs that give them a reason to work hard to achieve the business goals.
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Productive engagements
With online conference calls, the employees can be more involved in the meeting. In an online conference call, there is no unnecessary office chatter. The attendees cannot communicate with each other until the host starts the conference. With conference data shared on a personal screen at the front of each employee, they become more engaged and drawn to the conference. They attentively listen to what the presenter says and engage productively with every presenter. Even for shy people, conference calls offer them the best platform to air their views. It means that there will be a flow of ideas. It enhances productivity in the long run.
Familiar gear
In physical conferences, one depends on the equipment provided by the hosts. When taking part in an online conference call, you use your equipment like headphones and personal computers. By keeping your gear close to you, preparing for the conference becomes easy. It is also calming knowing you will use your tools. You can therefore concentrate on researching the conference.
Spontaneity
Online conference calls come in handy when the business needs to conduct a meeting urgently. The emergency meeting may be to discuss a change in the company that may affect the company’s structure. If the company is multi-location or multi-national, how does it gather people from every location and office for a meeting? Without worrying about the additional costs, the company can send invitations via emails to executives or employees, requesting them to join a conference call using the provided link. Within a few minutes, the employees or executives join the meeting. Virtual conference calls allow for spontaneity when organizing meetings. Without online conference calls, setting up an emergency meeting and making urgent announcements may have to wait.
Improves the attendance rates
The most significant benefit to online conference calls is making them from any device, any part of the world, or browser. Regardless of where you are or the device you are using, you can join the conference call using either audio or video. Therefore, hosting a webinar using an online conference call can address a broader range of audiences. It happens without paying the exorbitant travel and accommodation. It becomes easy to make these trade-offs, increasing the attendance for the conference.
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Easy networking
Using live audio, text, and video chats, the participants can engage with various specialists in their respective industries. Thus, they can create connections and get personalized, detailed insights regarding the conference agenda.
Above are the benefits of an online conference call. As we can see, they are a life-changing product, which is why many corporations have adopted them. So, what are some of the online conference call services? Below are some of the popular choices;
Popular conference calling services
Skype
Skype is a popular online conference calling software from Microsoft that allows you to make conference calls globally. It is a free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), meaning that you make the calls over the internet. It offers an unlimited calling plan at a low cost to land-line and cell phone connections globally.
Conference calling
ConferenceCalling is yet another online conference call service that offers you an unlimited conference calls experience. While using ConferenceCalling services, there is no need to make reservations. The service offers quality and professional customer support. They are on standby to assist you any time. It also has a screen-sharing feature that has a high definition and is crystal clear. They have various monthly plans you can select from.
Zoom
With the Coronavirus pandemic, zoom grew from a minimally known conference calling application to one of the most popular platforms for online conference calls. It is a video calling application that offers analytics, live chats, and so much more features. It also includes screen sharing. In the initial months of the lockdown, besides businesses, government institutions also used the service.
Microsoft teams
The other online conference calling application is Microsoft teams. The service gained popularity during the pandemic, and we saw it as a rival to Zoom because of privacy concerns. They optimize Microsoft teams for educational institutions, businesses, and government settings.
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Google meet
Google meet is a video calling service that also came during the early days of the pandemic. It eased the pressure on Zoom, which was the only conference calling software then. With Zoom’s privacy concerns, there were needs for alternatives like Microsoft teams and Google meet. Today Google meet is among the top three conference calling applications. It has features like screen sharing, reporting, and analytics, mute and unmuting both audio and video, among many others.
Conclusion
Online conference call services and software are a great relief to many businesses. Besides streamlining how a business delivers instructions to their employees, they also save on costs that would otherwise be used for accommodations and travel. They are also helpful when reviewing a product or a process, especially in software development companies. There are many providers of online conference call services. While most of these are free for basic features, there are unique plans to subscribe for premium features.
